


(Our Life Would Be) What We Made of It

by yxurstruly



Category: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain, Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn & Related Fandoms
Genre: AP Lang, Crossdressing, First Kiss, M/M, Post-Canon, Repression, Roleplay, but not in a gross way? like, they're KIDS, yeah - Freeform, you know that scene from the pigman where they dress up and have dinner?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:56:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25719193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yxurstruly/pseuds/yxurstruly
Summary: Finally, Tom came in through a door that wasn’t there. “Mary!” he cried, eyes bright, arms outstretched, and suddenly it was all there, the kitchen, the dinner, the son and the puppy playing out back, and oftentimes it pleasured Huck to dash Tom’s fantasies, to prove him all wrong, but now, as Tom scooped him up in his arms and twirled him around, the dress flying out around his ankles, it all was so right.***Huck and Tom play pretend.
Relationships: Huckleberry Finn/Tom Sawyer
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19





	(Our Life Would Be) What We Made of It

**Author's Note:**

> I know, I know--not my usual gig. I wrote this in AP Lang last October (and kind of wished my teacher would ask about it) so I'm slapping it up here. It takes place after the events of The Adventures of Huck Finn but with some things changed--Huck lives with Jim at the end, and their travels come full circle. Enjoy.

When Huck was reunited with Tom Sawyer and with peace he spent the whole afternoon recounting his adventures. Tom’s eyes lit up like stars when Huck told him about the fights, the scams, the rip-roaring times he had upstream. Huck tried to keep his stories mostly in order, but sometimes he forgot a piece, and so he had to backtrack for it all to make sense. It was on one of his backtracks that he mentioned his brief escapade as a young Sarah Mary Williams—he wore a dress and everything, he said, but the lady didn’t yet believe him—and then he moved on, but Tom spoke out then, bringing Huck’s lively tale to a halt.

“You went as a girl, Huck Finn?”

“Well,” Huck said abashedly, “I only dressed as one. And I didn’t fool nobody.” He had much more important stories to move on to and the sun was close to setting—he didn’t have much time to linger on the details.

“Why, this is perfect,” said Tom. “Now we can have a proper family.”

“What’s that?” Huck wasn’t sure he understood.

Tom explained that he and the boys tried to make a household of their own, and that he was the father, because he was the biggest and strongest of the bunch, and he could spit the farthest too. Ben Rogers, he was the son, mostly on account of he was the loudest, and he could spit the next farthest; and little Tommy Barnes was oftentimes the dog, because being the daughter didn’t suit him, he said, and Tom didn’t want more than one son to look after.

It was all good fun, Tom explained, but the one problem was that there warn’t no one to be the mother. “But you know how,” he pointed out to Huck, “so you oughtta be the mother.”

Huck said well okay, and Tom said to meet him around the same time tomorrow, “to practice.”

Well, said Huck, okay, he said again, because who could say no to Tom Sawyer?

***

When Huck arrived at their place—his and Tom’s place, that is, to meet up—he saw that Tom had brought with him some girl’s clothes—mother’s clothes, he supposed.

“Wear ‘em,” Tom ordered, “for practice.” So Huck undressed, kicking off his trousers and dropping his shirt unceremonious-like on a rock. He pulled the dress down over his head, and it was too big for him, but just barely. He set the bonnet on his head but couldn’t figure how to tie the strings ‘neath his chin. Tom reached up to help, his fingers fumbling against Huck’s neck until he got it just right. He stepped back to appraise his work, his eyes roving over Huck’s face, his own face flushed from the effort of his intricate handiwork.

Huck’s face, too, shone pink; the dress was stuffy and the early autumn afternoon sun shone like it was still mid-July.

“Good,” Tom deemed him eventually. Then he said that they needed to practice. “Do you know how to sew?”

Huck thought. “Not well.”

“Fine. Can you read?”

“Well enough. And I can spell fine too.”

“Well then.” Tom reached for a little slate and slate-pencil that he had brought along with the clothes. “You can give lessons with this. And you can tell stories right well, that’s a fact. Can you make a hot dinner?”

Huck offered his ability to cook fish over a fire, so long as Tom would go fish one for him, ‘cause that was a father’s job, and Tom said yes of course, what kind of a father do you think I am, and that settled that.

“Now we’ll practice when I come home from town,” Tom dictated.

“Are you drunk?” Huck asked worriedly. He wouldn’t want his son to have a drunk father.

Tom pondered it over some. “No,” he finally decided. “But I did real well today. And you’re real proud.”

Tom and Huck put distance between themselves ‘til it was clear that Huck was in the house, in the kitchen perhaps, and Tom was on his way home.

He took his sweet time, Tom did, strutting up the path, a man of the world, making hearty conversations with the invisible townsfolk he encountered along the way. Huck found that he was already quite proud of Tom, for whatever success he had achieved in the marketplace that day, but he was a little impatient for him to come home.

Finally, Tom came in through a door that wasn’t there. “Mary!” he cried, eyes bright, arms outstretched, and suddenly it was all there, the kitchen, the dinner, the son and the puppy playing out back, and oftentimes it pleasured Huck to dash Tom’s fantasies, to prove him all wrong, but now, as Tom scooped him up in his arms and twirled him around, the dress flying out around his ankles, it all was so right.

When Tom set him down—it wasn’t a very high lift, only a few inches by the armpits—Huck was dizzy and laughing. Tom cupped Hucks face in his hands and planted a swift kiss on his lips. “What’s for dinner?”

Huck did his best, laying the table and calling in the children (of course they weren’t there right now, but it was all for practice). Eventually the sun set, and Tom told Huck goodnight and stood real close to him, and for a moment there in the orangeness of early evening Huck thought Tom might kiss him again, though of course he didn’t. Tom dubbed Huck a good enough mother and dismissed him to change back into his boy clothes.

When Huck emerged from behind the rock, once again himself and no longer nobody’s Mary or mother, Tom was gone. Huck was a little saddened by this, but he cheered up at the knowing that he’d see Tom again, and the other boys too, the next day. He knew he’d have questions to answer from Jim about the dress, but he took it home anyways, and if he laid awake that night, thinking about the kiss or about how he might like very much to be a mother if Tom was the father, then that was his own personal secret, disclosed to nobody but himself.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from The Pigman by Paul Zindel, one of my very favorites.
> 
> Thank you for reading, traveler.


End file.
